Abstracts and program details for the upcoming Dartmouth conference are now available – see here.
Testimony conference: abstracts/program
May 25, 2008
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Dartmouth, alvin goldman, criminal verdicts, episteme, epistemology, forensic science, forensics, forthcoming, social epistemology, sociology, testimony | 
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Mind in Life
May 20, 2008A short review of Evan Thompson’s recent Mind in Life from Metapsychology online. I have commissioned a close-grained review essay for the Journal of Mind and Behavior – stay tuned.
Comments Off | Evan Thompson, Heidegger, Mind in Life, buddhism, cognitive science, embodiment, extended mind, journal of mind and behavior, neurobiology, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, psychology, qualia, social cognition, the "hard" problem | Permalink
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The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Sociality
May 18, 2008I received a message from Rob Wilson one of the most talented and broad-ranging philosopher-scientists around. He was updating me on what he’s been up to of late. He brought two things to my attention.
1. Rob has begun drafting the third instalment to his trilogy which he’s entitled Blood is Thicker than Water, nicht wahr? Terra Socialis: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Sociality. The first book Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Cognition has achieved classic status within the extended mind literature, a work which I reviewed very favourably:
No philosopher of social science can afford to ignore this book: this well informed, detailed and up-to-date discussion is virtually a self-contained course in the philosophy of social science and is more finessed and textured than other recent attempts to take account of the confluence between social science and cognitive science.
Hot on the heels of “Boundaries” was Genes and the Agents of Life: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Biology. Rob would welcome comments on the draft of Blood is Thicker than Water- the chapters can be downloaded from Rob’s website (left-hand window). It’s great that Rob is so open about his work - he welcomes any comments submitted before August 1st. I for one look forward to reading the draft soon.
2. Rob has also brought my attention to the What Sorts of People blog, attached to the What Sorts of People Should There Be? network. Both sites should be of interest to anyone that has social ontology as a central interest – philosophers of social science, sociologists, anthropologists, followers of public policy and several other disciplines - extended mind theorists and identity theorists will also find much to appreciate. Social epistemologists might also find the What Sorts of People Should There Be? site of relevance.
Comments Off | Bounds of Cognition, cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, distributed knowledge, embodiment, epistemology, explanation, extended mind, neurophilosophy, personal identity, philosophy of social science, political philosophy, psychology, relativism, robert wilson, social cognition, social constructivism, social epistemology, social identity, social ontology, sociocognition, sociology | Permalink
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Formal Modeling in Social Epistemology
May 17, 2008I don’t normally plug conferences but this one is unsual in that it falls squarely within my current research interests. Check out the conference webpage here.
Comments Off | Economics, aggregation, cognitive modeling, cognitive science, distributed knowledge, epistemology, political philosophy, social cognition, social epistemology, sociocognition, sociology, stigmergy, swarm intelligence | Permalink
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Epistemics for Forensics
May 15, 2008Roger Koppl has a column on forensics in the latest issue of Forbes. Reason Magazine has also picked up the story.
Roger also has an article “Epistemics for Forensics” coming out in the next issue of EPISTEME (5:2). The paper addresses problems of erroneous criminal verdicts that arise from the structure of the relationship between forensic laboratories and the courts. Roger’s work is a paradigmatic example of social epistemology’s salience to public policy. Check out some other press articles by Roger – duplicated in:
Many will recall Roger’s article from a couple of years ago EPISTEME 2:2 “Epistemic Systems” and the discussion generated by it. Here is some of the press coverage:
Comments Off | Forbes, Roger Koppl, criminal verdicts, epistemology, forensic science, forensics, injustice, justice, social epistemology, testimony | Permalink
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Testimony abstracts
May 13, 2008The abstracts for issue 4:3 of EPISTEME are now available. Apologies for not having them when the announcement was first made – a publisher glitch (to put is very politely).
Comments Off | Peter Lipton, arnon keren, distributed knowledge, episteme, epistemology, inference to the best explanation, jennifer lackey, john greco, jonathan adler, marc moffett, patrick rysiew, paul faulkner, social epistemology, sociocognition, sociology | Permalink
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Gaslighting: Cognitive Sabotage in the Extended Mind
May 9, 2008Here’s an interesting take on the notion of extended mind from the always thoughtful Susannah Devitt. I look forward to reading the complete paper.
Comments Off | Adams & Aizawa, Andy Clark, Bounds of Cognition, Chalmers, cognitive modeling, cognitive science, consciousness, distributed knowledge, embodiment, extended mind, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, psychology, social epistemology, sociocognition | Permalink
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Sociology of ideas
May 7, 2008This review article/interview plugging a book by Neil Gross that deals with Richard Rorty’s intellectual journey is noteworthy because the writer of this book refers to the sociology of ideas (SI) as superseding the sociology of knowledge (SK):
The old sociology of knowledge may have been terribly reductive — ideas are an expression of class interests or reflective of dominant cultural tendencies, etc etc — but the sociology of ideas today offers much more fine-grained theoretical tools.
This may well be but I’d be very interested to find out what distinguishes SI from SK and find out exactly what these finer-grained tools are.
Comments Off | 1, Neil Gross, Richard Rorty, distributed knowledge, epistemology, political philosophy, relativism, social cognition, social constructivism, social epistemology, social identity, social ontology, sociocognition, sociology | Permalink
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Cognitive Scaffolding
May 6, 2008This paper by Naomi Rokotnitz from a recently held conference featuring Andy Clark.
Comments Off | Bounds of Cognition, cognitive modeling, cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, distributed knowledge, embodiment, extended mind, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, psychology, social cognition, social epistemology, sociocognition, stigmergy | Permalink
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CFP: the significance of disagreement
May 3, 2008EPISTEME will hold its sixth annual conference at Northwestern University on June 26-27, 2009. The 2009 meeting will focus on the epistemological significance of disagreement.
Confirmed participants include: Michael Bergmann (Purdue), Stewart Cohen (Arizona State), Sherrilyn Roush (Berkeley) and Roger White (MIT).
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Papers should be no more than 5,000 words, excluding notes and references, and should be prepared for blind review. Electronic submissions should be sent to David.Christensen(at)Brown.edu by January 15, 2009. Approximately four papers will be selected from the submissions for presentation at the conference. The selected papers will also be published, along with the papers of the confirmed participants above, in a special issue of EPISTEME, with David Christensen as the Guest Editor.
Conference organizers are: Alvin Goldman (Rutgers), Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern) and David Christensen (Brown).
Comments Off | alvin goldman, david christensen, disagreement, episteme, epistemology, jennifer lackey, social epistemology, sociology | Permalink
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